To behead or not to behead (first blooms)

Has anyone done a comparison of seedling growth and health with at least a few (more than anecdotal) flats of seedlings with one section having all first, and maybe even second buds removed, another allowing them to bloom (perhaps develop for 5-7 days) and then remove, and another equal amount being allowed to be undisturbed-the first bloom would die,drop or brown out naturally, or something close to this or similar? I am not sure that this is a comparison, but the cultivars that are not blooming the first year usually look so much healthier and gain so much in growth when not spending their energy on blooming, that it seems that those immature blossoms might cost the plant a lot of growth and gains in health. All I have is anecdotal observations, but it seems like it might be best to remove some of those buds.

Jackie, Iā€™ve not done a controlled study, but I discovered many years ago that quite a few roses benefit from being prevented from blooming until they develop into the plants you desire them to be. Some are just too weak and will flower themselves to death, requiring being pushed to become viable plants before being permitted to flower, such as Grey Pearl and Fantan. Some like to flower instead of growing and will require eons to develop into mature plants because of flowering. Here, thatā€™s Rosarium Uetersen and Annie Laurie McDowell. Toocutechild I pushed like mad and, had the squirrel decided it really liked munching it, would have been a much larger plant, much faster because of not letting it flower.

I, too, have not done a study, but when I see a little seedling with one or two leaf clusters and a huge, firm bud Iā€™ve been snipping them off. This year Iā€™ve planted most of my seedlings directly into the field, and with our short season and cold winters Iā€™m really concerned about giving them the best chance to survive their first winter. It has to be exhausting to squeeze out all of those petals without any return to the plant.

I am seeing a big difference in a few, enough so that I may track them better, when I remove the buds/bloom of the really large flowered and heavily fragranced seedling blooms. Right now it is a little late to be making enough comparisons to be meaningful but that might be something I will try next year. So far my thoughts have been ā€˜if they arenā€™t strong enough to handle large blooms at this stage, will they ever be?ā€™ but I think the later germinations are at a disadvantage that may be balanced somewhat by disbudding.

OH, Iā€™m so bad! I KNOW I should disbud them but I just canā€™t bring myself to do it. Iā€™m so eager to see what theyā€™ll look like!

I usually let them flower once from time of germination then deadhead them untill they reach 6 mths old. All the growth goes to vegetative growth and not flowers, which produces a better younger plant. I cull again at 6mths.

Warren,

That sounds like a good policy, but I take the wait and see avenue to much. And I donā€™t want to cull to early, and I just love to see those early seedlings blooms, and watch how much the flower actually grows, but it does have negative outcomes. I am still living and learning.

I let them bloom, as it really sorts of the vigorous ones from the rest of the pack. It is kind of survival of the fittest in my backyardā€¦

Hi Jackie, I roughly have an idea what a seedlings first flower might end up. I sort of take in consideration the bloom stalk and plant size and what sap flow is feeding the new bloom, if it has reasonable size and structure at this stage, once sapflow is increased, blooms will get bigger and petals added (hopefully). My practise of not letting the seedling bloom results in 9 mth old seedlings obtain a height up to 3ft and when you see them bloom in Autumn you know what you really have. Of course the seedlings are planted out in a field situation, which changes a lot of things.

Sounds like lambs to the slaughter.

Warren, I get what you are saying, I think I am just to tempted to ā€˜play around with themā€™ to much. I am still astounded at how much these seedlings change, and totally understand the ā€˜big playersā€™ need to test for 4-6 yrs, or more. I have seen big changes in color, size, and bloom #'s in 3-4 yrs., that I might not have predicted at the onset (or from seeing the first bloom.)

The big guysā€¦if they deadheaded religiously like 50, 000 seedlings every day a flower bud came out, ummmmā€¦ I think they would find it a little hard to carry onā€¦think about it.

It depends on how fast they repeat George, it would be sporatic.

But, the ā€˜big guysā€™ were potentially raising tens to hundreds of thousands of seedlings a year and I offer that NONE of them were raising such special seedlings as most of us are. When crossing standard HT X HT, you will see quickly if there is vigor or not and you donā€™t want weak results, so dead heading small seedlings would be counter productive. When youā€™re raising mini x species, or shrub x species, you may not get many seedlings and the few you do, hold so much potential, you want to give them all the benefit of the doubt you can.

I give up, lol

:0)

Thoā€¦I do find this very interesting chatā€¦

It would also be nice to see if there is any sort of scientific data on this topic as well.

Warren,

Your method is great, Iā€™m sure it took a few years to get there and a stable of plants to work with. At this point I have little to no idea what the flowers are going to look like or the plant size, but iā€™m getting there. At this point 2ft for the season is fine(shorter season), no spray and little fertilizer and I like to see them flower right here at the doorstep. Iā€™m going to know what their potential is even if they donā€™t get there right away.

At least this year I finely had a breakthrough and have some good seedlings to work with and will use dead heading down the line if and when it is important. Neil

If you just want a specific plant to get its growth on before letting it bloom, thatā€™s fine. Tests on garden peppers, precocious flowering plants, showed that those forced to remain ā€œjuvenileā€ longer, also produced more fruit by the end of the season. Of course, the unmollested plants had the earliest fruit.

However, there is evidence that plants flowering for the first time produce more variable offspring than they will when they are a few years older. Van Mons discussed this in his ā€œtheoryā€ (or system) of plant breeding. It apparently served him well, considering how many pears he introduced.

This is the sort of thing that would have made Mendelianists laugh scornfully, if they had ever bothered to read anything published before Mendel invented plant breeding. But then one of their own, Calvin Bridges (1927, 1929), made the startling discovery that the same is true of fruit flies. Young flies produce more diverse offspring than they do when mated again just a few days later. A few days in the life of a fruit fly is comparable to a few decades in the life of a pear.

Then, Prokofyeva-Belgovskaya (1947) worked it out that heterochromatin (the condensed or silenced portion of chromosomes) increases with age. Heterochromatin reduced crossover frequency. Therefore, if two genes happen to lie on the same chromosome and fairly close together, we are more likely to find them separated while the parents are young, rather than after they become old and set in their ways.

Linkages to be considered are, for instance, between the bright yellow flower color of Rosa foetida and short-lived, black-spot prone leaves. Is the deep crimson color necessarily linked to a weak neck, or can the linkage be broken.

It is important to note that P-B also found that the degee of heterochromatization is partly inherited. That is, the offspring of old fruit flies start their lives with more heterochromatin than their siblings born to the same parents a few days earlier.

So, to break a linkage one may need to raise two or three generations from the first fruits.

Another useful possibility: Michurin found that plants flowering for the first time tend to be more tolerant of foreign pollen. First flowers of a seedling may be somewhat defective. This defectiveness may extend to incompatibility. Michurin also noted that once the virgin specimen had been ā€œtrickedā€ into accepting foreign pollen, it continued to accept that pollen in later years. That seems reason enough to get fruit as soon as possible from our seedlings, if we have any intention of breeding from them.

Karl

1 Like

Karl,

In reading through that wonderful explanation on heterochromatization, all I could visualize is ā€˜certainā€™ relatives and how true this has been even in the human genome.

Excellent Karl! Neil